Linguistics and Perl
on
Ask Larry Wall
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I hear your interest in linguistics has had an influence on Perl and Perl's "there's more then one way to do it" attitude mirror's well the flexibility of the languages of the world, better then most programming languages(for better or for worse). I was wondering if you could tell us a little how Perl has been influenced by linguistics and how you wish/hope it will be?
What, may I ask, did you do to spend all you time doing this sort of stuff, get cought on a drug test or was you job just that boring? And what where you supposed to be doing?
I was a helicopter mechanic and do you know what I did most of the time I was on duty, fix copters... ok, probably close to half was stuff like PT, cleaning the hanger, sitting on my cot while complaining about being on a field exercise, or sitting around on guard duty doing more of the same.
All in all, the Army wasn't half bad. It helped pay for the education that has me talking with you fine fellows and I learned quite a bit about myself. If you're young and stupid like I was, I would still recommend it.
While I was a chopper machine in the army, a friend told me about a very neat trick some units use to cool down the beer for battalion/squadron parties. They attach 2.75" unguided rocket stores on the external mounting points. Cobras and Apaches can carry 4 stores each. Now, 2.75" also happens to be about the diameter of a beer can, and each store can hold 19 rockets. Because the tubes are about 5' long, a single store can hold a lot of beer.
So they load the stores up, take the chopper up to 10,000 ft, fly around for 10-20 minutes and then come back down. This gets the beer nice and cold.
"Get as drunk as you can be in the Arrrrrmy!"
"If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the
bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power
that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or
inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness
lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?"
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
In theory a temp position is a position that is temporary, not just the person filling it. If the position is permanent. MS is using temps as a way of cutting cost, never a populer thing with the guys and gals working hard for peanuts in these positions. But these positions are one not tricky, and benefits are simply other forms of payment. An employer is going to try and pay their employees as little as possible, can't blame them really. I'm just glad the pay with one hand, take with the other practises of the turn of the century are gone. A fair wage is what you were promised, up front, with no tricks to lessen it.
Its the technical support jockeys, shuttle drivers and testers that are permatemps. The developer environment is great, I've been up there to visit a friend who writes for their web pages. It is phat, and boy does she love it. She's up there for the environment, the moneys just a fringe benefit, not that she's complaining;-)
It's kinda like the middle ages, the nobles had the life and the serfs had nothing, because the serfs were a dime a dozen, and any good, read makes the greedy stockholders a lot of money, business man would like to keep it that way.
technological determinism? pt II
on
The Renaissance
·
· Score: 1
The causes of signifacent historical events, like the Renaissance, is the meat and potatoes of the historian's profession. There is a tendency to hold up singular reasons for events, but the more we learn, the more we see it's not that simple, ever. Even after all the possible causes are taken in to account, there remains the fundimental question, "and what role did the people play?" To what extend were the people alive at the time made by the times, and to what extend were the times made by them? I, for one, refuse to belive that Michelangelo was an android made by the world; that
man is but a machine!
Other factors that have been put forward as contributing to the Renaissance are the Black death which killed half the workforce, driving up labor prices and gave the intellecual minds of the time a big wack accross the head kind of like the Peloponnesian War gave the minds of Athens. Some of the intellecual practices of the monistaries, like having a book read to you while you ate, started to become common among the upperclasses, alling to their learning.
Cruse missles are already computer controled, computers will only be able to replace humans in most missions when thye can adapt and make complex judgement calls.
As for using a network to keep track of them, I think that's a bad idea. Some commanders have been known to blanket jam a battlefield after preparing their troops and letting the small units slug it out without guidince from on high, assuming their troops will be better able to handle it
I agree. It seems espicially bad for text, most of the names were hard to read. I'm assuming that big red cloud in some of the screen shots is a directory with a lot of stuff in it. That would be very hard to work with. As long as you keep it's limitations in mind, it could still be very useful in some applications. Sure looks neat too
Look more like a shrunken head, maybe off a zombie or something. I just can't wait till someone makes a dorky movie about it like Mission to Mars. Or maybe take it to be Carl Sagan's "signature of the artist."
In theory (read, before the lawyers get to it) the impetus is on Microsoft to prove the code is their's, in the case of comtributed code, or that the programmer knew it was propritary code when he looked at it. But, then most open source programmers don't have the cash to defend against a swarming horde of corporate lawyers.
Very good point. A friend of mine summed up his objections to open source/ free software very well, "to make a living, I'd have to become a consultant and I don't want to be a consultant." And neither do I.
As for why GNU pushes GPL, it's trying to retain "artistic control" for the developer. Also, by serving as a deterant to the use of GPLed code in non-GPL, it pushes, rather forcibly, developers and corperations into being open/free. Finally, there is the stated reason, by publishing the source, the source can contribute to the knowledge of the all memebers of the community.
The author asked a very important question, is "liberating" software that someone else wrote stealing. What's the difference between taking a cabinet a carpenter slaved over for weeks and code a programmer slaved over. Carpenters sometimes give their creations away, but no one requiers them to, in most countries that is. This is one of the few pieces of software Mr. Bill actually wrote, and look what happens to it, someone ran off with it. Remember, Mr. Bill wasn't rich back then. That was money he needed to pay off all his speeding tickets.
Boundaries are not ment to keep everyone out, just those you do not want, those who have no business. No one wants people coming in to their homes poking around as they please. A boundaryless internet allows not just good and useful information to flow, but also harmful and untruthful information. Groups such as the Klan and child molesters are flurishing on the net because the walls that contained them do not exist. Completely censoring the net would be bad, but leaving it unrestraned would be equally bad.
"We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreackers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for adulterers and perverts, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for nurderers, for slave traders and liers and perjurers" 1 Timothy 1:10
Klansmen intent on maintaining the status quo of segregation would often say "that's just the way it is." Those of you who say that mp3s are here to stay are probably right, but does that change the fairness of what you are doing? Who cares about lawsuits, what are you doing, are you doing what is right, are you doing what is fair. If not, you're part of the problem with this world.
You can cook up your own skin. www.mozilla.org/chromezone has some cool looking ones, including "Navigator Classic" for "I like the old look" crowd. As for those of you who want your favorite hotkeys, they're been turned off for now. As for me, I just want the memory leak pluged. Nothing big;-)
Slashdot Mirror
I hear your interest in linguistics has had an influence on Perl and Perl's "there's more then one way to do it" attitude mirror's well the flexibility of the languages of the world, better then most programming languages(for better or for worse). I was wondering if you could tell us a little how Perl has been influenced by linguistics and how you wish/hope it will be?
What, may I ask, did you do to spend all you time doing this sort of stuff, get cought on a drug test or was you job just that boring? And what where you supposed to be doing?
I was a helicopter mechanic and do you know what I did most of the time I was on duty, fix copters... ok, probably close to half was stuff like PT, cleaning the hanger, sitting on my cot while complaining about being on a field exercise, or sitting around on guard duty doing more of the same.
All in all, the Army wasn't half bad. It helped pay for the education that has me talking with you fine fellows and I learned quite a bit about myself. If you're young and stupid like I was, I would still recommend it.
While I was a chopper machine in the army, a friend told me about a very neat trick some units use to cool down the beer for battalion/squadron parties. They attach 2.75" unguided rocket stores on the external mounting points. Cobras and Apaches can carry 4 stores each. Now, 2.75" also happens to be about the diameter of a beer can, and each store can hold 19 rockets. Because the tubes are about 5' long, a single store can hold a lot of beer.
So they load the stores up, take the chopper up to 10,000 ft, fly around for 10-20 minutes and then come back down. This gets the beer nice and cold.
"Get as drunk as you can be in the Arrrrrmy!"
"If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?"
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
Maybe that says something about bodybuilders, or, at least, the bodybuilders in question.
In theory a temp position is a position that is temporary, not just the person filling it. If the position is permanent. MS is using temps as a way of cutting cost, never a populer thing with the guys and gals working hard for peanuts in these positions. But these positions are one not tricky, and benefits are simply other forms of payment. An employer is going to try and pay their employees as little as possible, can't blame them really. I'm just glad the pay with one hand, take with the other practises of the turn of the century are gone. A fair wage is what you were promised, up front, with no tricks to lessen it.
Its the technical support jockeys, shuttle drivers and testers that are permatemps. The developer environment is great, I've been up there to visit a friend who writes for their web pages. It is phat, and boy does she love it. She's up there for the environment, the moneys just a fringe benefit, not that she's complaining;-)
It's kinda like the middle ages, the nobles had the life and the serfs had nothing, because the serfs were a dime a dozen, and any good, read makes the greedy stockholders a lot of money, business man would like to keep it that way.
The causes of signifacent historical events, like the Renaissance, is the meat and potatoes of the historian's profession. There is a tendency to hold up singular reasons for events, but the more we learn, the more we see it's not that simple, ever. Even after all the possible causes are taken in to account, there remains the fundimental question, "and what role did the people play?" To what extend were the people alive at the time made by the times, and to what extend were the times made by them? I, for one, refuse to belive that Michelangelo was an android made by the world; that man is but a machine!
Other factors that have been put forward as contributing to the Renaissance are the Black death which killed half the workforce, driving up labor prices and gave the intellecual minds of the time a big wack accross the head kind of like the Peloponnesian War gave the minds of Athens. Some of the intellecual practices of the monistaries, like having a book read to you while you ate, started to become common among the upperclasses, alling to their learning.
Cruse missles are already computer controled, computers will only be able to replace humans in most missions when thye can adapt and make complex judgement calls.
As for using a network to keep track of them, I think that's a bad idea. Some commanders have been known to blanket jam a battlefield after preparing their troops and letting the small units slug it out without guidince from on high, assuming their troops will be better able to handle it
I agree. It seems espicially bad for text, most of the names were hard to read. I'm assuming that big red cloud in some of the screen shots is a directory with a lot of stuff in it. That would be very hard to work with. As long as you keep it's limitations in mind, it could still be very useful in some applications. Sure looks neat too
That and linux doesn't have a deadline other then an informal, self determined one. Given more time, they could make another attempt.
Look more like a shrunken head, maybe off a zombie or something. I just can't wait till someone makes a dorky movie about it like Mission to Mars. Or maybe take it to be Carl Sagan's "signature of the artist."
In theory (read, before the lawyers get to it) the impetus is on Microsoft to prove the code is their's, in the case of comtributed code, or that the programmer knew it was propritary code when he looked at it. But, then most open source programmers don't have the cash to defend against a swarming horde of corporate lawyers.
Very good point. A friend of mine summed up his objections to open source/ free software very well, "to make a living, I'd have to become a consultant and I don't want to be a consultant." And neither do I.
As for why GNU pushes GPL, it's trying to retain "artistic control" for the developer. Also, by serving as a deterant to the use of GPLed code in non-GPL, it pushes, rather forcibly, developers and corperations into being open/free. Finally, there is the stated reason, by publishing the source, the source can contribute to the knowledge of the all memebers of the community.
The author asked a very important question, is "liberating" software that someone else wrote stealing. What's the difference between taking a cabinet a carpenter slaved over for weeks and code a programmer slaved over. Carpenters sometimes give their creations away, but no one requiers them to, in most countries that is. This is one of the few pieces of software Mr. Bill actually wrote, and look what happens to it, someone ran off with it. Remember, Mr. Bill wasn't rich back then. That was money he needed to pay off all his speeding tickets.
Boundaries are not ment to keep everyone out, just those you do not want, those who have no business. No one wants people coming in to their homes poking around as they please. A boundaryless internet allows not just good and useful information to flow, but also harmful and untruthful information. Groups such as the Klan and child molesters are flurishing on the net because the walls that contained them do not exist. Completely censoring the net would be bad, but leaving it unrestraned would be equally bad.
"We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreackers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for adulterers and perverts, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for nurderers, for slave traders and liers and perjurers" 1 Timothy 1:10
Klansmen intent on maintaining the status quo of segregation would often say "that's just the way it is." Those of you who say that mp3s are here to stay are probably right, but does that change the fairness of what you are doing? Who cares about lawsuits, what are you doing, are you doing what is right, are you doing what is fair. If not, you're part of the problem with this world.
You can cook up your own skin. www.mozilla.org/chromezone has some cool looking ones, including "Navigator Classic" for "I like the old look" crowd. As for those of you who want your favorite hotkeys, they're been turned off for now. As for me, I just want the memory leak pluged. Nothing big ;-)